072: What to Do When You’re Struggling to Delegate
Ever had a thought pop up in your head that sounds something like this, “I’m not good at delegating,” “delegating is not for me, I’m not quite sure how to do it,” if so, this is the episode for you.
In this episode, I am talking about some of the signs that you might be having some issues with delegating in your business.
You’ll learn about some of the most common problems that I see agency owners run into as they try to delegate out to their team. I will also be walking you through some of the solutions to help you get started delegating so you can take back more of your precious time and energy.
What’s in this episode:
- Symptoms that you might be struggling with delegation
- The most common issues I see with delegating
- The solutions to help you begin the delegation process
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EPISODE TRANSCRIPT:
Download the Episode 72 Transcript
You’re listening to the Scale Your Way podcast, where we share simple, proven strategies just for fun for you service based companies here, you’ll learn how to scale your business on your own terms so that you can have more time, money, create a bigger impact and a better life. I’m your host, Nicole Jackson Miller. Let’s dove into today’s episode. You know, hey, everyone, how are you today? Good morning. Good afternoon. Good evening. Wherever you are. I hope you’re having a great day. It is lovely here in Maryland. It’s finally a little cooler, which is nice. Today, we’re going to be talking about what to do if you are having trouble delegating. But before we get started, for those of you that don’t know me, hello, my name is Nicole and I help done for you service providers really step into the role of agency owner and create great experiences for all of their people, their clients, their team members and themselves as well.
And so today we are going to be talking about delegation. And this is for you If you’ve ever thought “I’m not good at delegating or I’m having trouble delegating or just this whole delegation thing isn’t working and I’m not quite sure what is going on.” This one’s for you. So you may be in a situation right now if you are having trouble delegating where maybe you have a lot of client delivery that’s currently on your plate, meaning that you are actually doing the work and working on the deliverables that you’re promising to your clients in your agreements, and you’re struggling to delegate those out to team members. And maybe it feels like a lot to be able to get external support because there’s some things that go into getting support and making it work right. There’s creating standard operating procedures. There’s going through hiring processes. If you already have someone, you know, maybe it hasn’t worked in the past and you don’t really know what you need to be doing, but you just know that whatever you’re doing isn’t working. That could be a situation that you might be in right now. You may have tried handing over client delivery to a team member, but felt like you’re still doing all of the work or you’re answering you’re now having to answer a ton of questions. This happens to a lot of my clients where it’s like, why am I paying a team member? Because I still feel like I’m the one who’s doing all of the work. What’s going on? Right? This is the opposite of what I wanted.
You might feel stuck not knowing if a team like if you’re having problems, you might not know what the problem is like, what the root causes is. So is it a problem with the person that you hired? Maybe you didn’t hire the right person. Is it a skill set issue? Or maybe you feel like you’re you might it’s you like you might not be good at delegating and leading. So you’re going back and forth being like, what is the who is the problem? Who is to blame? Is it me or is it somebody else? I see this a lot.
And then also something that comes up is thinking about the financial investment of outsourcing some of this work. Whether it’s bringing in a contractor or an employee, you may think, you know what, it’s maybe cheaper to do it myself. I’m not really sure, or that might just be your default.
So what we need to do first, there’s a there’s sometimes a lot of things happening and we need to actually diagnosed what the problem is, because it could be one problem. It could be a mixture of a few problems. But these are some of the most common issues that I see. One is that you’re not delegating the right things at the right time. So a question that I get is, you know, a problem that I see is not knowing what to delegate and when to delegate it. Right? Maybe you have a bunch of stuff that you need to get off of your plate and you just don’t know which order. Do you hire someone to just do it all? Do you just have something to do? Part of it another problem is maybe you’re not sure what you’re delegating is actually going to make you money. Right? So you’re not sure if you want to make sure that if you’re hiring someone in and you’re paying someone to do something, that you’re going to get a return on that investment, whether that be time, money, energy. But you’re not quite sure. You don’t have the numbers. And, you know, perhaps you might have a gut feeling on what you want to do, but you want to make sure that it’s backed by, you know, making sure that you can pay this person and that it’s sustainable for your business and also works for them, too.
It could be that the person that you’re working with doesn’t have the skillset to do the work one hundred percent. So sometimes if you if people are having trouble delegating, it’s a it’s a person issue. It’s a skillset issue. So this can happen frequently. And what happens is that, you know, maybe you feel like you’ve delegated these three tasks, but really they’re not doing one hundred percent of those tasks or maybe doing like 70 percent or 80 percent. And then either you’re stepping in to do the rest or another team member is depending on how you set up your organization.
Alternatively, the person may have this skill set but doesn’t have the isn’t empowered to take ownership, or maybe they don’t have the information or direction to be able to actually do a hundred percent of the work either. So those are some of the problems that I see. And so let’s talk a little bit about solutions. And if you are listening to this and you find that you fit into one of these categories, I would love to know what problem you feel like you have right now when it comes to delegating. Right? Because sometimes when. In our heads, it can feel really messy, right, but when we actually start writing things down and categorizing some things and then, you know, listening in to this information around delegating, you can start to figure out, OK, you know what? Maybe it is more of like me, or maybe it’s actually that I’m not delegating the right things at the right time. I want you to tell me where you feel like you fall into some of these categories, because then we can start to get really clear on what solutions might be. But it takes some time to actually diagnosed with a problem is first.
And that’s what I share with anyone who is signing up for my programs that a lot of times we want quick fixes. Right. We want to come in. We want to be able to get some solutions, take some actions and see change quite quickly. And I do think that that’s possible. It’s what I call low hanging fruit. Oftentimes, there might be one or two things that if you just tweak it, you’ll see that return immediately. However, there’s other things that require longer term strategies. And it’s really important that not only you do these quick fixes, but that also you get to the root of the problem so that you can actually make a change moving forward. So let’s talk through some optional solutions. These are all things that I teach inside of my program AGENCY, which is specifically designed to help you delegate 50 percent of client delivery in 12 months or less. And so delegation is a big thing that we work on.
So the first is, if you’re finding yourself, not knowing what to delegate, in what order you need to come up with a delegation strategy. And so it’s not just about diving into action and know hiring someone new or better delegating, we need to figure out like what is your actual strategy? And so what I have my clients do is I have them assess all of the things that they need to take off of their plate. And there’s an assessment that they go through to determine what is the highest priority thing to remove next off of your plate. And then what we do is we take those tasks and we actually look at the financials. So we see what would it take financially for me to be able to delegate these priority items next. So first, we want to make sure their priority, but we also want to make sure it works financially. And do any changes need to happen financially in order to make me be able to delegate these things next? Or do I need to make can I can I just do this kind of delegate this today? Or do I need to maybe increase my price point a little bit or streamline my processes in order to make this work long term? So we take a look at those things.
If you feel like the person that you’re delegating to doesn’t have a skillset and you have given them all of the tools and guidance and feedback to be able to do this, or perhaps there’s some things that you need to delegate and you don’t have a person there to delegate to, then you’ll want to take a look at hiring and actually going through a really thoughtful hiring process to make sure that you are hiring the right person to take these tasks off of your plate.
And then if you feel like you have a person in the position that could take some things over, but you know that maybe you haven’t done the best job at actually giving them the guidance and tools and information to be able to do that. That’s where we look at delegation training. So actually teaching you how to delegate, how to delegate in a way that’s actually going to work not just for you, but for the person on your team so that they can really fully take ownership over their tasks so that you don’t have to do it anymore. Again, like the two biggest issues I see with delegating is that, one, you’ve delegated things, but they’re still coming back on your plate. Or two, people just don’t have the right people in place to be able to do those things. Right? And that’s where we take a look at hiring.
So the big thing I want you to take away from this conversation is that the first thing you need to do is focus in on the strategy, right. The strategy, what is the problem? And then based on that, what is the strategy for how I want to delegate next in my business? And that will help you determine do I need to hire someone? Do I need to actually reassess what I am delegating in my business? And if it’s giving me the return that I want it to give me both financially, time, energy. And then also, could I be doing a better job at handing things over to people so that they can actually do the job and it doesn’t come back on my plate too.
So I’d love to know from you what out of this is something that has been the most helpful to you and based on the problem that you’re having and like being able to diagnose this problem, what is that solution? Based on the things that I’ve shared? All of this is inside of the AGENCY Delegation Method, which is part of my agency program, like I said, it helps clients delegate at least 50 percent of client delivery in 12 months or less. If this is something that you feel like you need support with, that you have struggled with, but feel like maybe you’ve received some advice, whether it be from other consultants or whether it be from doing your own research, that just hasn’t landed.
I highly recommend that you check out the program. There is a link either below this video or in my bio for you to learn more and see if it’s something that might be a good fit for you. And there’s also a really great assessment that you’ll get if you apply for the program that will help you self assess where you are in your business and actually give you it shows you a little bit more about how like the strategy for what we teach inside of agency, but also help you determine what it is that you need to focus on next in your business. And for everyone who has gone through this assessment, whether they join AGENCY or not, they said that it actually shed a lot of light on what they need to focus on next in their business, which was super helpful. So the application page for that is NicoleJacksonMiller.com/apply, super easy. And if you have any questions on delegating or on the program, feel free to send me a message and I will be happy to answer any of your questions. I hope you all have a great rest of your day and I will talk to you later. Bye, everyone.
Thanks so much for tuning in. If you are ready to stop settling for being a done for your service provider and really fully step into the role of agency owner and CEO and lead a team that you love that just delivers excellent client results, then you have to check out my new program called AGENCY, which is specifically designed to remove you from at least 50 percent of client delivery in 12 months or less, so that you can have the time and the space to be able to run your business and, you know, to take a tech free vacation, too. That’s always nice, right? So if you’re interested in learning more, head over to NicoleJacksonMiller.com/Apply. You can learn more about the program. If it looks like a good fit, then apply and we will send you before our call. We’ll send you a free business assessment that will really explain more about the framework that we use to remove you from client delivery. And it’ll give you an assessment that you can take to really show where you are now and where you’re going. We’ve had so many people get a lot of insight just from taking that assessment, so I can’t wait for you to check it out.
